The End is Just the Beginning

I stared at the screen and my hands began to shake. Every cell in my body was seizing with anger and I thought seriously about throwing my keyboard through the office window. “He blocked me on Facebook?? Are you fucking kidding me?!” I screamed at the computer. And there it was, the inevitable ending I was looking for. I had been half expecting him to break up with me for weeks before it happened. Of course, I expected him to handle the situation…well a little differently then he did.

I hadn’t spoken to him in three weeks prior to the Facebook incident. We had decided to take some space apart, which is laughable considering we live almost 900 miles away from each other. He was set to try out for a soccer team in Thailand and assured me that he needed space to “mentally prepare for the challenges ahead.” Apparently for him, mental preparation requires having sex with his ex girlfriend.

So, that’s sort of how it ended. He deleted our love with the click of a mouse and it was gone so quickly it was like it never happened. He sent me an email a couple weeks after, mostly so he could ask me to stop messing with his wikipedia page. Drinking can drive you to do crazy things sometimes. Luckily, I didn’t get much crazier than changing his name to “Douche” and changing the word soccer to “Douching”. Before I knew it his page looked like a poorly executed mad lib.

Work began piling up on my next, and by that I mean a FB post went unanswered. Regardless, I was not living up to my potential. I listened to nothing but Aimee Mann and Ani Difranco for two weeks straight before my CEO finally knocked on my door and asked me if everything was alright. I looked up from my desk and into his soul, “Tell your daughters to never date athletes.” He nodded his head and backed away from my office with caution. Everyone sort of left me alone after that. My weekends were filled with drunken debouchery and my attempts at dressing “sexy and single” fell short and I looked more like a baby prostitute than anything else. I stopped wearing pants and eating anywhere besides my bed. I had spent the last 8 months allowing my life and my future to revolve around someone other than myself, someone who was using me and who didn’t really care for me at all. It was time to pick myself up off the floor, put on my big girl pants, and try to get my life back on track. It was time for a rebound.

There was another guy that I had, had my eye on. He had meaningless leg tattoos, a beard, and dumb job–the attraction was immediate. One night he even got drunk enough to tell me that he’s incapable of loving other people. We made out sloppily for hours on his sweat stained sheets. His room, his bed, and his beard reaked of stale cigarette smoke. He had “rebound” written all over him and I went in for the kill. It wasn’t until he rejected me, that I thought seriously about revaulating the decisions I was making. “But I’m hotter than him. I have a better job and a brand new car. Like, I have everything going for me. How can he NOT be into this??” My friend stared blankly from behind her lit cigarette. “Do you even like him?” “No, I’m just trying to get back out there.” She took a long pause before finally responding, “He sends snap chats of himself on the toilet, and you want to have sex with him.” “Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Sure I get rejected in relationships ALL THE TIME but never for casual sex. NEVER for casual sex. What’s happening to me?” My friend practically fell over laughing, my face flushed pink with embarrassment and suddenly I felt deeply irritated. “You need to relax, you’re just hitting your quarter-life crisis a little earlier than most people. You’ll be fine.”

Quarter-life crisis–It didn’t need to be explained. I knew exactly what those words meant as soon as they fell from her mouth. College was over, my friends had all found healthy relationships or had moved away, or both. Real life had begun and it was sucking me in some unknown direction, one filled with morning commutes and paperwork. I thought about my job, how hard I work and how little money I make, I thought about still living in Columbus in a stuffy condo that I hate, I thought about my latest failed relationship and realized that this was not where I thought I’d be at 23. It was enough to push me near the brink of a complete meltdown, during which I continued to try to answer my own question of What the fuck do I want out of life?

The truth is that I only really think I know what I want. I do know that I don’t want to be sitting in an office watching the 27th severe summer storm of the season only to realize that my windows are down and my umbrella’s in the car. Moments like these remind me that my life might be a cruel joke. There’s a reason why I don’t know what I want and it’s the same reason why these little life crisis’ exist. It’s because we tend to lose ourselves sometimes. We put other people’s needs before our own until we stop remembering who we are and what we were made for. We allow ourselves to become disconnected from our goals and dreams and once realized, it can cause stifling depression and anxiety. I’m tired of trying to live my life for some guy, or for my friends, or even for my parents. I’m looking for me, and I’m not going to stop until I’ve found her. I’m going to prove that your twenties are not a lost decade by making mine the into gold.